All's Peaceful On Tiananmen Square

BEIJING — Hawkers sold hats and Mao Tse-tung's little red book on Tiananmen Square Friday where five years ago defiant students and workers made their last stand against troops and tanks.

In the sunshine toddlers played, someone flew a kite and Chinese from the provinces took snapshots of each other. Tired tourists rested on the steps of the monument to China's heroes. The flag of Cambodia fluttered to celebrate the state visit of Prince Norodom Sihanouk, who came back to his Beijing residence just in time to give his hosts a valid excuse to mobilize a vast security cordon.

Under the oak trees near the square people squatting on the curb read the People's Daily, the bible of the Communist Party. It chose Friday to launch a bitter attack against the U.S. Washington, the paper said, "uses its strength to bully the weak and frequently tries to dictate the internal affairs of other nations."

Around the readers, police were present officially to protect Sihanouk, now king of Cambodia, a man who spent years in exile in this capital and still returns for cancer treatments.

Unofficially the formidable mobilization was to quash any acts of defiance by protesters the authorities habitually classify as "mentally deranged."

No one in China is allowed to commemorate the brutal crackdown on the night of June 3-4, 1989, when hundreds, perhaps thousands, were killed as troops and tanks smashed their way into the square, crushing demonstrations during which up to 1 million people clamored for democratic reforms during a six-week period.

To make sure the anniversary passed without incident, all group activities were banned for a week. This included games, school outings, banquets and even school picnics. The employees of state enterprises were told to stay away from the square and to go home early at night. Surveillance cameras on the lampposts surrounding Tiananmen were serviced two days earlier.

Hotels were ordered to pull the plug on cable TV broadcasts from abroad, apparently to stop footage from archives of the massacre from being aired in China. In Beijing's diplomatic compound, cable news went black with each news item about China.

An NBC crew filming on the square "without authorization" was detained for a few hours. Newsmen were told to leave the areas near campuses and by nightfall the Chinese capital, usually abuzz on Friday nights, resembled a ghost town.

During the week, police arrested a labor activist and six Christians in the capital, and reports from Shanghai's small dissident community said most of its members were in detention.

China's nervous leaders have left nothing to chance, afraid perhaps that even the tiniest spark of dissent might enflame a country made restless by bourgeoning unemployment, corruption, inflation and a migrant population of hundreds of millions looking for jobs.

Only a few brave souls quietly commemorated a massacre officially labeled a "counter-revolutionary rebellion."

People's University professors Jiang Peikun and Ding Zilin were reported to be on a hunger strike. Their 17-year-old son was killed the night of the crackdown, and his ashes are still under the couple's bed.

Both professors, although harassed constantly by police, want authorities to provide a list of those killed and an explanation why troops indiscriminately shot peaceful bystanders, including doctors and nurses who tried to help the wounded.

Jiang Zongcao, the wife of a high-ranking official who was accused of leaking party secrets to the student movement, said she was using the occasion to write more letters to the leaders asking for the release of her husband, Bao Tong.

The ailing official was sentenced to seven years in jail and recently underwent emergency surgery.

While China's 1.2 billion people were virtually muzzled, the People's Daily not only criticized the United States as a meddler but said President Clinton's troubles with Japan over trade, with China over human rights and with North Korea over nuclear power were all of his own making.

It said the U.S. "went as far as to interfere in Singapore's justice system"-by attempting to stop the caning of an American teenager convicted of vandalism. The newspaper added that Washington must deal with Asian countries "on the basis of equality."

"It cannot take advantage of its power to bully others," it said.

Having digested all this on the curbside, some of the readers of the People's Daily were told by police, with a few bullying shoves: "Move on!"